Well I spent a lot of $$ on gear and had 20 phoenix's but kept getting bullshit step mines and magnitude killing people. Also, it's literally impossible to do the fight with 0 downs unless he never does the spoon attack. He did the spoon attack at least 8x in all of my attempts and it's a 100% hit rate auto kill so how the fuck did you not die once.

A) I wasn't cursing at you or anyone else. B) I don't need advice, the encounter is simply broken. C) I finally beat it, took me 13 phoenix downs and 15 minutes. No encounter this early in the game should be that difficult. The only reason I was losing was because I only had 9 phoenix downs originally so I had to go back to town and buy a fuck ton of them. If you have to rez 13 times to beat this shit when you're over leveled for it and geared to the teeth, it's broken. It felt like I was fighting a weapon in FF7.

I'm using gau, locke, edgar, celes. I'm well aware it's not min maxing but there's no fucking reason whatsoever that I should be having this much difficulty with a party that's entirely over leveled and has the best possible gear in the entire game at this point in time. This piece of shit uses slim jim every 20 fucking seconds. It's so god damn retarded it's unbelievable. Then he uses spoon once every minute and auto kills whoever it hits. Then I rez them, then he hits that fucking person right before I can heal them then they die again, then he spawns adds, then he slim jims again. Tone this fucking piece of shit boss down. It's seriously the most cancerous shit I've ever experienced in my entire life playing a JRPG.

I've beaten him before on the 1.4a version. Not sure if he was buffed or what not but this time it's virtually impossible. I legit had a much easier time with Atma weapon than this fucking guy. I'm over leveled for the zone with all level 13-14's when the mod maker says the zone is intended for 10-12(good fucking joke). I'm employing what is literally a flawless strategy. I always defend his jump attack. I hold my turn with Edgar usually with bio blast so I can immediately kill his adds when he spawns them. My entire team is in the back row using weapons that ignore row so that I avoid as much damage as possible. I'm having Celes slow and heal non stop. I've attempted 6x so far with my last attempt had him using "spoon" literally back to back insta killing 2 of my guys then after I rezzed them he insta killed them again. No fucking boss this early in the game should be this difficult. He's literally harder than Atma weapon which is fucking retarded. He 100 million percent needs to be toned down.

There are no real time tactics unless you switch to active combat. The other things you mentioned aren't really skills. How difficult is it to know that if your opponent is weak to fire then you use fire. The level of depth in strategy is basically non-existent which is why I think you're trying a bit too hard. I mean, I easily beat this game when I was like 10 years old, how hard can it be? If you're not willing to switch to active combat then I have no clue why you're even on the forums complaining that the game has become too easy.

The only skill involved whatsoever is preparation pretty much. Your only chance of dying is due to being poorly prepared or just bad RNG. By maintaining a low level you're just making the game artificially harder which doesn't really increase the skill requirement, it just makes fights take longer and increases the chances for RNG to screw you. The only way you could make the game more skill based would be to switch combat mode to active so if increasing difficulty is what you're truly after then I suggest doing that.

Ah cool. Just wanted to make sure. I started playing recently but it turns out I've been playing the 1.4a version which is quite old and I tried updating it to 1.9 and it crashes. I ended up killing shadow and wanted to play him anyways so I guess I'll just restart fresh with 1.9

Hmm not sure what you mean? I got to the end and it said "jump" or "I can't leave without shadow!" I tried to click that but nothing happened and I only had 10 seconds left so i just jumped
don't tell me I can't get Shadow now...